THE
NATIVE AMERICANS HAD AN EASIER TIME IN THEIR ENCOUNTER WITH THE WHITES THAN DID
THE JEWS IN ONE RESPECT
From my vantage point, it
seems that the Native Americans had an easier time of it in encountering the
White man than we Jews did in one respect.
The White man did not
understand or respect their spiritual/moral tradition at all, so they did not
try to arrogate it. While Native children were taken forcibly from their
parents and placed in boarding schools wherein they were taught to be
Christians, often under brutal conditions; Native Americans did not have to
endure seeing barbarians make their tradition into a justification for the most
extreme kinds of violence and orgiastic rituals.
They certainly did see the
erection of churches on land they held sacred, but they did not have to endure
the indescribable misery of seeing their ceremonies stolen by the White man and
distorted.
They did not have to witness
their teachings tortured out of all recognition and forced down the throats of
a good deal of Humanity.
The expropriation of Judaism
by Christians goes on unabated. I spent a good deal of the last five years
trying to undo the damage that Christian pseudo-researchers did when they went
to press with claims that HaYachad (commonly known as
"the Essenes") were a proto-Christian
group. There is no mention of Yeshu in all of the
extant fragments and no basis upon which to make such a claim. They made those
claims wholly irresponsibly all the some. Luckily for us, they had to bring
Jews into the research loop (they kept us out for three decades) because they
could not read Hebrew well enough to continue the research and one of the worst
offenders made a particularly ugly anti-Semitic slur while inebriated, so he
was dismissed of his duty.
I'll be spending this week
defending the Torah again - this time against someone who is misrepresenting
the Torah to "prove" that the redemption will come (cum?) as a result
of the rebirth of Jesus, this time with the libido of Kings David and Shlomo combined. The charlatan called himself "Christo" and has performed "reflowering"
ceremonies in
I envy the Natives for not
having to endure the heartbreak and utter disgust that defies all description
at having to witness such things.
Their spiritual teachings were
so abstract that the Christians could not find an end to the thread and so left
them alone. They were also transmitted orally, and so could not be seized.
What is the provenance of the
spiritual/moral parasitism that drove the White man to invade others' traditions, particularly that of the Jews, take them over
and mutate them into monstrosities?
To compound the matter, in our
times it is not considered "politically correct" to defend one's
tradition if it excludes others. That is considered being "clannish".
It is interesting that exclusion from entrée is taken as a matter of
fact in corporate culture and in very many other facets of society. Rules for inclusion and exclusion are
understood to be necessary in life. Yet, the Jews are excoriated for our
exclusion of any and all. Those who concoct interpretations of Torah that seems
to integrate Judaism with the traditions of others, no matter how outrageously,
inappropriately, baselessly and repugnantly to Jews who cherish our tradition, are
celebrated for urging the last of the Jewish holdouts toward full assimilation
(and hopefully disappearance).
Neither is one permitted to
defend classical Judaism as that is being parochial, even primitive. While the
non-Jew who pontificates a distorted interpretation of Torah (generally based
upon a translation and always scoured for that which seems to support what the
person wants the Text to say) is taken to be someone who is integrating Judaism
with a number of other traditions and thus coming to a more comprehensive view
of Torah than any Jew who sticks to pure Judaism ever could.
Moreover, nowadays everyone is
"entitled to their own opinion" and it is not cool to call someone
down for expressing an off-the-wall, totally baseless opinion about one's own
culture. The person who irresponsibly likens a passage in Torah to whatever
suits him or her is being universalistic. Whereas, a Jew who defends what the
Torah says, as interpreted by Jews over a period of millennia, is being a hater
of unity among all Humankind.
So, we Jews are now in a
triple bind. The appropriating of our
teachings goes on and we are considered parochial, clannish bigots if we defend
our tradition against those who would distort it for their own purposes.
God of
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan,